I am fascinated by song stories...the glimpses of composers' lives that their creations permit us to see, although oftentimes not so readily. Here are my my "scoops", posted here for your enjoyment, and for what I hope will feed our mutual curiosity about His musical purposes for us. Join me in this history adventure, as we find what circumstances coalesced to create the songs we all love! Play detective with me, and tell me what song "scoops" you may know that I don't...yet.

About Me

Monday, May 27, 2013

She had
someone or a group of people in mind as she penned words for a song to
accompany her husband’s upcoming sermon one Autumn day in 1852. Thirty-four
year old Cecil Alexander evidently wanted to draw some parallels between her
neighbors or fellow churchgoers and a well-known apostle (see his picture here,
along with his brother Peter and the Christ, by Caravaggio). It may even be
assumed that her preacher-husband gave her some thoughts to get her prose
rolling that day when “Jesus Calls Us” was written. That she had been most accustomed to writing
children’s songs may have also been why she needed the advice and encouragement
of another adult when she went about composing this hymn for grown-ups. Do the
words resonate with you, as an adult?

Cecil
Alexander’s composition “Jesus Calls Us” indeed was something of an unusual
exercise for this composer, considering the audience for the song and what was
her routine for her poetry. She’d written many of her poem-songs for children
by the age of 20, really not that long after she had left her own childhood
behind. These had been published by 1848, and then she married two years later,
an occasion that most people regard as entry into the adult world. Her husband,
William, a minister in a poor local church in Ireland, was preparing one
November to deliver a message based on the example of the apostle Andrew – a called
individual. William asked his wife to think of a hymn for adults as the
Anglican holiday, St. Andrew’s Day, approached on the last Sunday of the month.
He evidently wanted a memorable song to accompany his sermon, and knowing his
wife’s pedigree, he must have felt pretty confident, though most of her experience
had been writing for children. But, her experience also included ministering to
the people of the area herself, with lots of sick, cold, and hungry people that
she saw daily. So, she no doubt had a personal and practical familiarity with a
calling to help others. The ‘tumult’ and ‘sorrows’ she wrote about must have
been not just in her imagination, but in fact real hurts that she witnessed every
day, just as were the ‘vain world’ and ‘idol(s)’, interspersed with a few ‘joys’
and ‘pleasures’ that she observed also.

Her
husband’s influence also showed in the words she wrote, although the verse she
composed that he read in the church service has not normally survived in our
modern hymnal texts. That’s unfortunate, because it helps communicate the hymn’s
background, its genesis (see the link below). She calls out Andrew’s example of
dropping his profession, literally, and following the Master upon encountering
Him. That episode must have been electric, wouldn’t you imagine? It makes one
ponder … to what does He call me today? Should I stop working? Is there a
greater task He has for me to do? Cecil must have seen and heard a lot from her
neighbors that had her thinking they needed to reach beyond their own world,
perhaps because there was just too much privation, too much disappointment
where they were. Would it be an ironic twist, if I have so much, and were less
inclined to turn my head when he calls out to me? He offers more, incredibly more, even if I am very
physically blessed here. Read Cecil’s words, and see if they make you re-think things.

See more
information on the composer and the song in Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring
Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications,
1990; The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and
Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House
Publishers, 2006; and 101 More Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck,
Kregel Publications, 1985

See the
link here for a 2nd verse rarely seen in print, which really lends some
context to the circumstances of the poetry that Cecil Alexander wrote – a reference
to the subject of her husband’s sermon that day in November 1852. http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/j/e/s/jesuscus.htm

Saturday, May 18, 2013

It might alternately
be called ‘Floyd’s Song’ because of the circumstances surrounding its genesis.
That’s the subtitle that Lanny Wolfe gave to the words and the music for
something he wrote back in the 1970’s (about 1977) for an event where he and
his group were waiting to join in a celebration. Sure, Lanny and his friends
had been asked, so their attendance at the church building dedication was not a
surprise, but when Lanny heard a small but distinct voice tell him some words
for a new song, that was unexpected (or, was it really?). “Surely the Presence
of the Lord” was born on the spot as the Lanny Wolfe Trio prepared to sing, and
the way it’s been used since then makes one think God must have had more than
one episode in mind when he whispered the words to the composer that day.

Lanny Wolfe was
certainly struck by how “Surely the Presence of the Lord” worked its way into
his being the very first time, perhaps because of the multiple incidents over
the following decades in which it played such a memorable role in his and
others’ lives. The minister’s name at the church in Columbia, Mississippi was Floyd
Odom, and he’d invited Lanny and his group to sing as the members of the church
there marked the completion of the church building. So, Lanny must have thought
that Floyd was the reason for the song’s origin - -without that moment and the
gathering of joyful people eager to thank the Holy One for His work, maybe the
song would not have come about. Indeed, Lanny tends to remember lots of the
Trio’s songs with subtitles that say they are some person’s song…perhaps his way
of saying that songs inhabit us personally, not just events or places in time. Lanny
says the song’s words came quickly, such that he didn’t have the chance to run
through any chords or even tell his fellow musicians, Marietta Wolfe (his wife
at the time) and Dave Petersen, what had just popped into his head. So, he
taught it to them the same moment the assembled church members heard it, with
just the notes and flow of the song in his head. Lanny says it worked because
there were people there, not just pews
and stain-glassed windows. He wanted to be in them, not the building. And, that’s
been the song’s recurring theme in at least four other episodes in many different
circumstances, which Lanny relates in the book More Than Wonderful that he’s
put together to tell his song stories.

The other episodes range
from a personal one-on-one Midwestern U.S. incident in which someone’s life was
in danger, to a megachurch in China where the song was a celebration sung in
many languages. It’s been transmitted to countless people on a television
broadcast, but also used in private family gatherings to shepherd a dear family
member into eternity. How varied are our
people-centered experiences, but how common is the foundation that we believers
have? That’s what Lanny Wolfe is communicating in the words he composed that day
in Columbia, Mississippi. He’s present where His people are, be they just one
or two, or perhaps many thousands. And, he comes during our many emotions. Just
like Job, I can worship even though beaten down (Job 1:20), or I may instead be
in a festive spirit like David (2 Sam. 6:16-21), though it offends others. I
just know He’s inside. Who could contain what is surely there, Lanny says?

Saturday, May 11, 2013

He was a
believer in insurance …that’s what many who crossed this fellow’s path might
have remembered about him, if they never saw his poetry. But, it’s a good bet
that Johnson Oatman Jr.’s insurance advice wasn’t exclusively the conventional
kind that would protect yours and your loved ones’ financial state. He’d
probably pondered another state for a while by the time he turned 39 and wrote
the words “No, Not One” as the turn of the century approached in 1895. His
vocation, though secular, did not prevent him from pursuing other, deeper
expressions of his beliefs, a ministry that flourished and was prodigious by
any standard. What motivated him, at a relatively late point in life, to burst
forth with his song-writing? Was he
thinking negatively (No, Not One), as someone might who’s considering negative space (as in
this classic Rubin’s vase optical illusion, shown here, wherein nothingness actually
does depict something after all)?

Johnson
Oatman, Jr. evidently took after his father, Johnson Sr., in many ways, but
also sowed new ground following his father’s departure from life. His father’s reputation
as a singer—called by some the best in the eastern U.S.--no doubt overshadowed
the younger Johnson to some degree. He nevertheless must have admired his dad,
so much so that he joined in the family’s business to work alongside Johnson
Sr. Moreover, at 19 years old, he became an ordained Methodist minister, yet
remained in the family’s commercial enterprise, manifest evidence that he’d matured
in the faith instilled by his father while remaining close to his parental and
vocational influence. With his father’s death (exact year unknown), two
important changes would commence in Johnson Jr.’s life. The younger Oatman is credited
with some 3,000 to 5,000 hymn texts, an incredible number, especially
considering he did not begin this avocation until in his mid-30’s, apparently
after his father was gone. In addition to this new venture, he changed professional
careers, entering the insurance field (the reason for the switch in vocation is
not known). Thus, a casual, distant observer might presume that the son was finally
breaking free of shackles, becoming his own man both vocationally and
creatively. Perhaps some of that is true. But, one thing that linked the two
Oatmans remained – the father’s love for God expressed through music did not
die with him. Indeed, watching and listening to his dad for years, someone
might say, welled up into a colossus that would articulate itself throughout
the last three decades of the son’s life. “No Not One”, written about three
years into this new part of Oatman’s life as a songwriter, offers a window into
his emotions and his spirit. Was he breaking
free, or was he magnifying what had been planted inside? You and I can look at his
words and decide.

Johnson
Oatman evidently had issues like any of us, someone who needed ‘cheer’ while
confined in a dark place managing ‘struggles’ and ‘soul’s diseases’. He also evidently
had pangs of loneliness. He’d lost his father, so we might surmise he was missing
him and clinging to the divine Father. That Father promises not to leave. As he looked around in
1895, perhaps that’s what he’d discovered, that nothing down here compares to
what He has for me. People die. Jobs change. Can I find anything here that’s
good that doesn’t eventually bust, or any hurt that completely goes away though
salved with the best solution? No, not one, Oatman’s words repeat. Was it a
mid-life crisis, triggered by personal and vocational challenges that made Johnson
Oatman write the words? Maybe. They won’t matter, ultimately. No, not one. These
negative words are worth a hoorah in this case!

See more
information on the composer and the song in Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring
Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications,
1990; and The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and
Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House
Publishers, 2006.For more background on
the composer, see Then Sings My Soul – 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn
Stories, Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003; and 101 More
Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985